Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Week 3 in Manaus

We received this email from Joshua on Tuesday, October 13th. He included a couple of photos as well.Hey everybody!

Sorry I couldn´t email yesterday! Our mission president changed our preparation day to today because yesterday was a holiday (Dia das Crianças). It was super cool. We had an activity at the church building yesterday. There was a ton of food and cake, ping pong, and music. Everyone here listens to american music. It´s pretty funny. People keep asking me to translate song lyrics into portuguese for them. At the activity they had a playstation set up with fifa with tons of people crouded around it. My companion kept looking at it and saying "stop tempting me, Satan!" (as missionaries we aren´t allowed to play videogames or watch tv or movies).

Brazil is crazy! It is still really hot here!

This week we worked a ton, like usual. We also ate a ton, like usual. We eat lunch with the members instead of dinner here, and nine times out of ten it´s chicken, rice, beans, and noodles. Elder Galván always talks about how tired he is of chicken. I still like it. This week also we ate this fish called pacú. The fish here is super good.

Random flashback: One time I was with my family in Delaware and we saw (and smelled) a bunch of trucks full of chickens driving on the streets. Here they have trucks full of fish that drive on the streets. They also have vans full of fruit that drive around selling it, and a guy will be yelling into a megaphone: "Melancia, melancia, maçã, banana, melancia, abacaxi, melancia!" They drive really slow.

This week we taught a ton of lessons and we found a bunch of new investigators. It´s still super confusing and hard for me to remember names and faces because we talk to so many people every day, and because most of the time it´s pretty hard to understand what people are saying. The accent here is super different from the accent in São Paulo. There are a few other missionaries here from São Paulo and it is a lot easier to understand them than the people that live here in Manaus.

This week I have been thinking a lot about obedience. A lot of times we are told to do things and we don´t understand the purpose behind them, or sometimes we need to do things that seem impossible to us. I´ve been thinking a lot about 1 Nephi 3:7, how Nephi was obedient to the Lord and risked his and his brothers´ lives to get the brass plates, even he didn´t know how the task would be accomplished at first. But instead of giving up, he said he will go and do the things the Lord commanded of him, because he knew that when the Lord gives commandments to us, he always provides a way to accomplish them. Sometimes it´s really hard to be in the middle of a foreign country away from home and family and friends and english and peanut butter, but I know that I am here for a reason and that Heavenly Father will provide a way for me to accomplish all that he has asked of me, because he never asks anything of us that is impossible for us.